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Monday, September 29, 2014

A Fatherhood Manifesto

Maybe an overblown title for this post, but here is a favorite quote of mine that has shaped how I view fatherhood and life. From The Emperor’s Embrace: Reflections on
Animal Families and Fatherhood, by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, Pocket
Books, 1999, pp. 203-209

We evolved (this means that
historically we come from an ancestral environment where it was adaptive
to do certain things that have had an impact both on our biology and on
our psyche) to share a bed with our infants. . . . We evolved to feed our infants whenever they are hungry. . . . We evolved to respond quickly to the cries of a baby. . . . Fathers evolved to stay with their children throughout their entire childhoods, eighteen years or longer. . . .
We evolved (especially fathers!) to play with our children on a daily
basis. Prolonged play (many hours of it every day) is good for the
baby, good for the father, good for the mother (it gives her a break),
and provides essential stimulation. Even more important, play provides
memories of touch and sensation that give the infant feelings of
happiness and playfulness that, if missed, can never be made up for by
any amount of later physical pleasures. We evolved to travel with
our children. No other animal species posts signs warning that an
establishment is for adults only; no other species holds parties for
which the invitation states that children are not welcome. . . . We did
not evolve to have the family broken up for anything but a fraction of
the day. . . . We evolved to be in the natural environment. . . .
No wonder children get bored when they are confined indoors. . . .
Research has shown that babies are happiest when they are carried while
the parents are walking at a speed of three to four miles per hour. . . . . . we appear to be the only species that can consciously choose how involved we want to be as fathers.
We can learn to be less like bears, lions, male elephants, and Hanuman
langurs, and more like penguins and mallee fowl, wolves and foxes,
beavers and sea horses, marmosets and tamarins, prairie dogs and
tropical frogs.